Acton police officers undergo mental illness training

Thursday

Feb 26, 2015 at 12:00 PM

By Molly Loughman mloughman@wickedlocal.com

Refining its approach to safely responding to persons with mental illness, Acton Police Department officers will soon attend a new training course now required by the state’s Executive Office of Public Safety.

By the end of 2015, all municipal police offices in the state will receive in-service training titled “Police Interactions with Persons with Mental Illness,” which was developed by the Massachusetts National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI Mass), the Department of Mental Health (DMH) and the Municipal Police Training Committee (MPTC). NAMI advocates for access to services, treatment and supporting research for people with mental illnesses.

Like other police departments in the state adhering to MPTC requirements, APD officers must fulfill 40 hours annually of in-service training. As a part of the in-service training in 2015, Acton police will get one half-day on how police officers should interact with persons with mental illness. The same mental health curriculum has been implemented into recruit training, said Deputy Chief Rich Burrows, explaining it’s about recognizing the increased interactions officers have with people who have mental illness.

“This is a major step forward in providing all law enforcement officers better tools for the safe and responsive management of incidents involving people experiencing mental health crises,” said June S. Binney, director of the NAMI Mass Criminal Justice Project.

From last September to this coming May, APD is sending one to two officers each week to Lowell Police Training Unit in Lowell, where each officer attends one week of training, from Monday through Friday. This year, four hours is provided for dealing with persons with mental illness. So far, APD has sent about 80 percent of the department, said Burrows.

Taught by specially trained police officers throughout the state, the course curriculum includes an overview of symptoms of mental illness, learning verbal and nonverbal communication skills to safety deescalate potentially dangerous situations and also how to recognize trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

At the end of training, police officers will be expected to describe police interaction with people who have mental or cognitive disorders, discuss common attitudes and behaviors, differentiate between myths and facts in dealing with the mentally ill, recognize signs in a person who may have a mental illness, know limitations and challenges, demonstrate verbal and nonverbal communication skills and also understand laws regarding Section 12, the involuntarily committal of people who are of danger to themselves or others.

“The intent of this vitally important training is creating better outcomes during encounters with those who suffer mental illness and other populations. We are grateful to NAMI Mass and DMH for collaborating with the MPTC to develop this crucial, best-practices training for new and existing police officers,” said MPTC executive director Dan Zivkovich.

According to NAMI, each year close to 60 million Americans experience a mental health disorder. One in 17 people have a serious mental illness, such as schizophrenia, major depression or bipolar disorder. One in every 10 children and adolescents suffer from serious emotional and mental disorders that can result in significant functional impairment in their everyday lives.

Improved police training boosts the safety for all involved and can ideally enable someone with mental illness to seek appropriate treatment without having to endure the stress of arrest and incarceration, said Binney.

In recent years, Burrows said the police department has been dealing more frequently with Section 12’s, people who are involuntarily committed for up to 72 hours. Sometimes doctors’ offices will call police to have them transport a mentally ill individual to the hospital. Other times, the APD has to write up the Section 12 based on something it’s dealing with at night.

“A lot of people with mental health issues are former drug abusers as well. We’re seeing kids as young as high school (with mental health problems). We’re going to calls at the schools where people are really acting out and they’re calling us to remove them,” said Widmayer, adding APD has offered mental health training for a long time, mostly through the local Domestic Violence Services Network, Inc. (DVSN).

Other mental illness calls range from children fighting their parents, runaways and domestic abuse to people with pre-dementia, dementia or Alzheimer’s. APD spends most of its time on mental illness-related calls than any other calls, besides car accidents, said Widmayer.

“It’s hard to deal with. And it’s really pretty steadily gotten worse over the last few years. I think the economy has a lot to do with it. We’re less into arrest and enforcement than we used to be. It’s more into social aspects that we’re dealing with -- people are fighting more,” said Widmayer.

Widmayer said the APD is pursuing a new initiative with the towns of Bedford, Concord and Lexington, in conjunction with private nonprofit human services organization Eliot Community Human Service, to always have a mental health professional on call to assist police officers responding to mentally ill individuals.

“Because one of the things we’re trying to do is not charge them criminally, but if we don’t, we keep running into them over and over,” said Widmayer. “So many people are just out there with no services and if they don’t take their medication, they cause problems or they just don’t have medication because they don’t go to the doctor.”